In recent years, the volume of data is increasing continuously and handling of data takes a great effort. On this account, computer-based work stations are introduced actively so that a mass of data is stored, arranged and so on without the need of manpower.
For example, in a sales activity of a business firm, a salesman returns to his firm with orders acquired from customers, and the order data are entered to the work station. The work station implements such processes as arrangement and computation for each order data which has been entered and operates to produce order slips and statistic materials.
Collection of order data by a salesman has taken place conventionally in such a way that in response to an order reception, the salesman writes the customer's name, the destination of ordered commodity, the commodity name, the quantity of commodity, etc. in a notebook or a certain form. Portable terminal units (handy terminals) incorporating a CPU (Central Processing Unit), memory, display panel and data input means are available in the market, and the use of such a terminal enables the collection of enormous order data without the risk of input error.
However, the above-mentioned conventional systems need to hold order data which have been collected externally by a salesman until the data are entered to the work station of the firm. In the case of writing order data in a notebook or certain form, the salesman is anxious lest he might lose the written record, or in the case of using a portable terminal unit, the memory capacity is another question and in dealing with a great many order receptions, care must be taken to the memory capacity against overflow.
Furthermore, in the case of entering order data written in a notebook or certain form into the work station, it is normally carried out manually, and with the increase in the number of orders received by each salesman the quantity of order data to be entered to the work station becomes enormous, imposing the need of a considerable labor for the input task and also the possibility of input error.
Moreover, the delivery operation will take place only after the salesman has returned from the customer to his firm and order data written in a notebook or certain form or order data collected in a portable terminal unit has been entered to the work station, resulting in a late delivery to the customer.
In order to overcome these problems, there has been proposed in the past the use of the telephone line for transmitting data stored in a portable terminal unit to the central work station. However, it still suffers the bulkiness of the whole equipment, particularly due to a large acoustic coupler used for connecting the terminal unit to the telephone line.
This invention is intended to overcome the foregoing prior art deficiencies, and its object is to provide a data collection-transmission apparatus which is reduced in size and weight and a data collection system capable of transmitting data collected on the part of a terminal unit to the central work station or the like over the telephone line.